September
There’s always a point when I’m preparing a new collection that I step back and realize certain colors have quietly followed me from one painting to the next.
This month, it’s green.
Not one particular green, but seemingly every version of it. Soft, earthy greens. Deep, moody greens. Blue-greens and turquoise. Greens muddied with umber and ochre. Some have become the focus of a painting, while others have appeared almost unexpectedly in small passages and layers.
I never begin a collection with a prescribed palette. I paint fairly intuitively, so I find it interesting to look around the studio afterward and see the common threads that have emerged on their own.
Alongside all that green, I’ve been reaching for warmer colors too. Dusty pinks, ochres, tobacco browns, sepias and creamy ivories. Colors that feel especially right as summer begins to give way to autumn.
Perhaps I’m simply noticing the season changing around me. Or perhaps these are just the colors I want to live with right now.
The studio itself has been much the same as always: antique frames leaning against walls, palettes covered in half-mixed colors I’m not quite ready to let go of, paintings in various stages of becoming, and probably far too many brushes sitting in jars.
A chaotic mess of beauty.
This week, many of those experiments, palettes and little studio moments come together in the September collection. Looking at the finished works now, I can see the conversation between them more clearly than I could while I was painting them.
And maybe that’s my favorite part of creating a collection. I don’t entirely know what it will say until it’s finished.
Amanda